Hearing First in Congress Since WIPP Events
Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
6/19/2015
Members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations called for Department of Energy oversight reform late last week after issues came to light following the February 2014 radiological release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The hearing marks the first in Congress specifically on WIPP since the events last year shut the facility down, leading to a lengthy and costly recovery still underway. Lawmakers compared those incidents to the 2012 breach at the Y-12 National Security Complex by peace activists. “What was clear from that incident sounds very familiar today –What the feds thought were working wasn’t. Site officials trusted the contractors were doing what they were supposed to do, without checking. The federal line oversight had failed,” Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said at the hearing.
The WIPP release has been traced to a group of hundreds of waste drums sent to WIPP from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the waste had been processed using materials that become volatile when mixed together. The violations in waste processing were not caught by the many checks and balances in place, and subsequent DOE investigations found numerous oversight failures.
‘We Continue to Have Incidents That Make Me Question This Approach’
Several lawmakers cited a recent Government Accountability Office report finding that the National Nuclear Security Administration must better establish guidance for its contractor oversight using information from contractor assurance systems. The NNSA put those systems into place envisioning that the agency could focus limited oversight resources on high-risk areas while the contractors could oversee their own performance in many places. “The new model, which had reliance on contractor assurance systems was supposed to let contractors assess performance and provide data for federal oversight efforts, Nonetheless, since implementation of this strategy five years ago, we continue to have incidents that make me question this approach,” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said, adding later: “I think it’s safe to say this new oversight framework needs major retooling.”
NNSA Official Notes ‘Failure’ of Contractor Assurance Systems
Murphy noted that at Los Alamos waste had been improperly processed for over a year before the issue was caught. “Is it truly any surprise to you that Los Alamos feds did not know that workers spent a year and a half incorrectly mixing hundreds of barrels of radiological waste?” he asked. NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator Madelyn Creedon noted that one issue has been “clearly the failure of the CAS approach and the CAS system at Los Alamos. So Los Alamos did not have a mature CAS system, and it had not picked up these issues.”
A “primary weakness” of the CAS system is that it is “inadequate” in overseeing subcontractors, Creedon said. The waste at Los Alamos had been processed by Lab subcontractors. “This is a fundamental problem. The other problem –and this is a problem that we have begun to address already –is that the lines of oversight at Los Alamos were not clear,” she said.
DOE Transitioning Los Alamos Oversight to EM
As a result, the Department of Energy is in the process of transitioning legacy cleanup work at Los Alamos from NNSA oversight to the Office of Environmental Management, which largely funds the cleanup program. But some members of the House panel remained skeptical. “I’ve been on this subcommittee for 10 years, and we’ve been dealing with these problems every year that I’ve been on the subcommittee,” Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said. “What is it going to take to get these things brought up to standards where we won’t be reading these types of headlines and, quite honestly, putting our workers and contractors at risk?”
DOE is aiming to resolve those issues, EM Acting Assistant Secretary Mark Whitney responded. “We’ve developed a more robust corrective action tracking system, a corrective action software hub, and we will assure to follow through on all corrective actions,” he said. “We’re also increasing resources in oversight area for headquarters for our safety, security and quality programs office that really did not have the staffing to implement a robust headquarters oversight program. We’ve done the same at Carlsbad Field Office, increasing resources. But, just as importantly, we’ve reorganized the office there.”
Murphy said that the subcommittee plans to hold follow-up hearings on the issue. “We recognize that these problems have gone on for too long, we want to continue to work with you and we’d like to have further hearings on this in the future,” he told DOE officials.
